Just one week after CBOE temporarily withdrew their ETF proposal against the backdrop of a partial US government shutdown, the options exchange moves to resubmit. The proposal, if approved, will supposably heighten liquidity by injecting more money into the cryptocurrency market

Yesterday, 23 January, the US Securities and Exchange Commission released a two-page document revealing the temporary withdrawal of the proposed rule change by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) BZX Exchange Inc. This proposed rule change was said to lay the groundwork for the long-anticipated VanEck/SolidX BTC ETF

Japan and Hong Kong are considering ETFs, Japan banks may issue own currencies, positive developments from India, Malta and Dubai having intentions to become 'blockchain'-territories, new regulation by Texas, cautions on Bermuda's draft regulation, and Israeli official's negative opinion

The SEC recently released a stream of rulings versus ICOs such as AirFox and Paragon, but, the regulatory body’s actions on exchanges have a more substantial, short-term effect which could drive new investments to the asset class

The US SEC has been delaying a decision for BTC ETF approvals, the last update for a decision was slated for 29 December 2018; will the hash war between Bitcoin Cash ABC and SV affect BTC ETF prospects for approval?

Cryptos not a legal tender in Zambia, South Korea to continue ban of ICOs, SEC calls for a finale of BTC ETFs, Singapore to help crypto startups with bank account opening, new crypto laws in Hong Kong, World Bank sees great potential in blockchain, FinCEN accuses Iran of bypassing economic sanctions

It turned out that the recent Bitcoin bug was potentially the worst ever. Also, the SEC still thinks about Bitcoin ETF approval, smart contracts on IOTA, new developments by Brave — all in this weekend news!

Hot world news

It may sound like a 2014-era shitcoin, but Globalcoin is this year’s most anticipated new digital asset. It doesn’t matter that it’s not decentralized, not permissionless, and not even crypto. The only question that really matters is what does Facebook’s currency spell for bitcoin? Will it steal its thunder or accelerate bitcoin adoption?
Also read: Traders Are Now Banned From Using Localbitcoins Exchange in Iran
Globalcoin: Coming Soon to a World Near You
If Mark Zuckerberg had hoped to convince the world that he’s a normal guy, and not a shape-shifting Illuminati reptilian, Globalcoin has scuppered that. It’s the name that satirists would have dubbed Facebook’s forthcoming currency, had Zuck not gone and claimed it for himself. Like Facebook itself, Globalcoin (GC) is easy to mock and easier to meme, but away from the easy one-liners, what’s known about the coin and what effect – if any – will it have on cryptocurrency?
GC is scheduled to launch in Q1 2020. Lest confirmation were needed as to how entrenched in the legacy financial system Zuck bucks will be, Facebook’s CEO has reportedly met with Bank of England governor Mark Carney as well as seeking advice from the U.S. Treasury. Project Libra, as the program is known, has been one of the world’s worst kept secrets since 2018, when it emerged that Facebook was seeking to hire blockchain developers for a covert monetary project.
Mining GlobalCoin pic.twitter.com/G4fuSq956f
— cryptograffiti (@cryptograffiti) May 24, 2019
GC will be nothing more than another fiat-pegged stablecoin, which is unremarkable. The coin’s real power comes in the network effects that can be leveraged to get the currency into the hands of billions, including Facebook users who don’t have bank accounts. The benefits this could bring to Facebook-loyal consumers, who can seamlessly use the coin in-app (be it FB, Insta, or Whatsapp) to pay friends and purchase goods, are substantial. But the benefits this powerful new trove of data will bring Facebook are bigger still.
A Cash Grab From the World’s Data Despots
Facebook’s extremely shitty attitude towards protecting user privacy does not need reiterating. Indeed, it is hard to think of a worse qualified custodian of a global digital currency. For all its crimes though – deplatforming, unauthorized data sharing, censorship and flagrant privacy violations – Facebook remains the world’s dominant social network. People are inherently complacent and, save for a handful of privacy purists, there has been no mass exodus of users in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and similar abuses. It doesn’t matter how much data Globalcoin harvests or who it’s shared with: if the coin works seamlessly, people will use it.
As for quite how crypto Facebook’s crypto is, the answer is “not very.” As a permissioned currency, just like the permissioned social network it lives inside, it’s irrelevant whether GC runs on a blockchain or an SQL database. No amount of nodes or validators will change the fact that your globalcoins are only yours provided you use them for the purpose that Zuckerberg intended. Play by the rules, and you’ll be just fine. Step out of line, however, and expect to see your account balance emptied and wallet frozen. As Bloomberg put it, “More than 2 billion users spending one currency, controlled by one billionaire. What’s to worry about?,” noting that Dr Evil would love Globalcoin.
Wow bold move from Facebook on the Globalcoin logo pic.twitter.com/YAMFRoxUYt
— Josh Cincinnati (@acityinohio) May 24, 2019
What Globalcoin Means for Bitcoin
As for what GC means for bitcoin, there are essentially two schools of thought. One holds that GC holds a genuine threat in giving the masses the benefits of crypto – fast settlement, low fees, wrapped in a package that even grandma can understand – with none of the downsides, such as volatility, complexity, or the irreversible loss of funds. In this paradigm, GC will replace BTC as a medium of exchange (MoE), leaving bitcoin to serve as a store of value (SoV) and for payments that fall outside of Facebook’s purview – like buying drugs. If this comes to pass, then GC could also threaten other MoE cryptos such as BCH, LTC, and DASH.
The other school of thought holds that Globalcoin will serve as a Trojan horse, or gateway drug, to bitcoin. Through normalizing the use of digital currency, it will make the transition to permissionless crypto seem less scary, ensuring that bitcoin is primely placed to onboard the masses when they tire of GC’s limitations: the privacy concerns, the data abuses, and the limited means of spending. In this context, Zuckerberg’s vanilla crypto will get bested by bitcoin, which can outmuscle it on all fronts, save for network effects. With an estimated 30 million cryptocurrency users versus 2.4 billion Facebook users, Globalcoin will launch with a massive advantage.
Didn’t think I’d ever say this, but:
I don’t want to live in a world where mark zuckerberg beats the winklevii.
— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) May 24, 2019
Love, hate, or fear it, Globalcoin merely represents the inevitable evolution of money. The majority of our spending has already gravitated to the digital realm, be it Paypal, Apple Pay, Visa, Venmo or bitcoin. With the underlying payment network being abstracted away while cash dies a slow death, Globalcoin will take a seat at the table of digital payment solutions, despite offering nothing new. As has been reiterated many times over, bitcoin doesn’t need to take over the world to succeed: it simply needs to survive. It is highly probable that Globalcoin will gain more users in its first month than bitcoin ever has or ever will. That metric, however, is meaningless.
When Facebook users tire of being surveilled, censored, and sold out, bitcoin will be there, as sound money that is beholden to no one and available to everyone.
What are your thoughts on Globalcoin? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see what’s happening in the industry.
The post Facebook Globalcoin: Bitcoin Killer or Bitcoin Multiplier? appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitfinex’s Leo tokens faced quite a lot of criticism when they were announced, due to the missing $850 million funds from Bitfinex. The private investment round by Bitfinex also faced a lot of heat from the media. However, in a recent development, Leo tokens are being listed on various exchanges for trading.
Leo token’s listing was announced yesterday (24 May) on a Chinese exchange, ZB.COM; in addition to this, the tokens are being listed on various exchanges, such as “Delta Exchange”.
Delta Exchange tweeted:
$LEO perpetual contract is now live on Delta Exchange. Long/ short LEO with up to 20x leverage. The contract is margined and settled in $USDC. #CryptoNews #CryptocurrencyNews $BNB #BTC
Bitfinex had previously announced that Leo tokens will start trading on the exchange on May 20 and will be paired against BTC, USDT, USD, EOS, and ETH; at press time, the tokens were priced at $1.26 and had a 24-hour trade volume of $4 million as per CoinMarketCap.
A lot of prominent people in the community are cautious about the Leo tokens due to their connection with Bitfinex, Tether, iFinex, etc. The CTO of Bitfinex, Paolo Ardoino, tweeted:
“Lions are spreading. This is precisely the strong and unite community support that we have been talking about in the Unus Sed $LEO whitepaper (link: https://www.bitfinex.com/wp-2019-05.pdf) bitfinex.com/wp-2019-05.pdf
Thanks @balanipankaj and @Delta_Exchange @bitfinex.”
Despite the negative news surrounding Bitfinex and Tether, there has been a massive influx of USDT hitting the market. The market cap of Tether increased by a massive $100 million in over 60 days, which caused the market cap to reach an all-time high since its inception.
Bitcoin has been stuck in a sideways movement, hovering closely near the $8,000 point, while people speculated that the massive burst in Tether’s market cap might move the price of Bitcoin.
The post Bitfinex’s LEO tokens now listed on Delta Exchange and available to trade appeared first on AMBCrypto.

Bitcoin Cash recently upgraded its network to integrate the Schnorr Multisig feature. As good as the development was with the advantages of Schnorr, it led to a fault that would have cost Bitcoin Cash more than the advantages of Schnorr. Two miners, BTC.TOP and BTC.COM took advantage of an unintentional split to launch a 51% attack on the network during the upgrade.
Checksum0, an independent miner says BTC.TOP and other pools were intentionally mining empty blocks to lengthen the blockchain from a split on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Invalid transactions were sent to ABC node’s mempool but miners, however, were able to quickly detect and diagnose the issue and reported to ABC, checksum0 explained.
ABC quickly took care of the problem with a fix in no time so that things returned to normal. Although there have been rumors that the attack was as a result of the upgrade, checksum0 thinks otherwise.
“This is totally unrelated to today’s upgrade, or any upgrade for that matter. This is a bug that was specific to ABC code,” he insisted.
Chief Scientist at Bitcoin Unlimited, Peter Rizun also said the bug was just exploited at the time of the upgrade to create the impression that it was related to the upgrade.
“It was a vulnerability that someone sat on for a long time and chose today to exploit, to make the bug appear more related to the network upgrade than it was. It was really more of a nuisance than anything: it just caused ABC miners to mine empty blocks until they got patched.”
A professor at Cornell University, Emin Gün Sirer added that it was a small bug that was exploited, a common problem with decentralized networks but nothing more. It is unclear why the attackers chose to strike during the upgrade, but it would appear they wanted to invalidate the reliability of the upgrade by disrupting the normal functioning of mining activities.
A Twitter user Guy Swann seems to be seriously disturbed by the incidence and how no one seems to have noticed or said anything about the attack. He, however, points out that this has significant implications on the integrity of Bitcoin Cash network.
“There are at least a few people (maybe only partially) realizing that this basically kills any perception that #BCH is “decentralized, censorship resistant money,” he said.
The post Miners Exploit Recent Bug to Launch 51% Attack on the Bitcoin Cash Network appeared first on ZyCrypto.

Coinspeaker Mike Novogratz: Facebook’s GlobalCoin Won’t Rival BitcoinMajor Bitcoin bull and former Wall Street exec Mike Novogratz recently discussed the current state of the cryptocurrency industry. The Galaxy Digital CEO explained why he thinks the crypto winter is finally over and why ‘Facebook Coin’ won’t rival Bitcoin.During his interview, Novogratz reminded that everyone had their own version of Bitcoin and the supply exponentially grew. Bitcoin, he thinks, had really established itself as a store value. He said:“This is hard to do because there is just one more stored value of this kind. It’s gold. It is hard to be worth something just because it’s worth something. Almost everything else is different. For example, Uber shares are worth something because people are using it. What Bitcoin has done is a unique thing.”He also referred to Bitcoin’s intrinsic value saying:“You can take all the gold in history that has been mined and put it in three Olympic swimming pools and it’s worth $8,5 trillions. Why? Because it sits in the vaults.”Novogratz went to mention that retailers are buying Bitcoin but also the institutions are moving in. There are Yale, Harvard and Stanford endowments.Microsoft Wanting to Link with Bitcoin Blockchain is a Big ThingThe CEO claims the original Bitcoin boom witnessed around 2016-2017 was influenced by the retail-driven investments by around 98%. This means more companies were buying cryptocurrency at a time when it looked like the future of finance. The recent developments in the crypto world are also affected by ‘credentialing’ according to the CEO especially with the recent move by Microsoft in the industry.“Also, there is Microsoft, one of the biggest companies in the world that says they want to do identify solution by linking it to the Bitcoin blockchain. Now this is big.”Microsoft recently announced their initiation of an identity solution to add to the Bitcoin blockchain. As more investments crowd Bitcoin, its value soars higher as witnessed in the recent spike. Microsoft is not the only big organization enabling the ‘credentialization’ of Bitcoin. Not long ago, Facebook lifted all the bans it had imposed on cryptocurrency and any blockchain-related advertisements.He also mentioned Facebook coin saying that it is really important for the ecosystem.“Crypto is going to be part of Facebook’s future. However, this coin will be listed to some stable currency and will be used for payyments. Bitcoin on the other hand is not going to be the payment currency – it will be stored vault, just like gold. If you really think bitcoin is gonna win this store of value, everything else needs to be used for something.”GlobalCoin Isn’t a Threat to BitcoinAs we’ve already wrote, Facebook’s GlobalCoin will probably be established as a stablecoin, pegged to the dollar or local currencies in the countries that will be allowed to use it. It is also likely to run on a private, centralized blockchain, owned and controlled by the company. Based on this fact, it can not be perceived as a direct competition to Bitcoin or other peer to peer decentralized digital currencies.Other coins that piqued Novogratz’s interest include Ethereum and EOS. These projects have to encourage developers to build on top of their platforms. Just few days ago he was comparing various cryptocurrencies with chemical elements in the periodic table. He then considered the role of altcoins, hinting that each coin will have “to prove themselves out” in order to provide a certain use case.On this note, Novogratz argued out that “there’s no one building anything on the Litecoin blockchain,” as opposed to the Ethereum blockchain.Recently, Novogratz made yet another Bitcoin prediction, claiming that the major cryptocurrency will beat its all-time-high record of $20,000 within the next 18 months.Mike Novogratz: Facebook’s GlobalCoin Won’t Rival Bitcoin